 Welcome to a discussion of radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, laissez-faire capitalism, and individual rights. The Yaron Brooks Show starts now. Hi everybody, good morning, good afternoon. Well, I'm actually in London. London, England, it is now 5 p.m. I flew over just a few hours ago, so I'm a little jet lagged. A little tired. I don't sleep well on airplanes. I don't know about you guys, but I find it very difficult to sleep on planes. I didn't sleep much, so hopefully I won't be rambling today. And I'll be talking about, you know, some people say I'm ramble all the time. Hopefully I'll be coherent. Of course there are those who claim that I'm incoherent all the time. So welcome everybody, and it's good to do the show. And it's good to take you around the world as I travel to all these wonderful places. I really have had an opportunity to give a talk here in London to students. And that was earlier this afternoon. I talked about the morality of capitalism to about 50, 60 students at King's College. Students who belong to European Students for Liberty. Kind of a libertarian student group, a free market student group that is pretty active in Europe. I'll be speaking for this group again in Poland next week. Actually next week the Iran Book Show is going to come to you from Warsaw. Warsaw, Poland. I mean, if you keep track of the show, you're going to get a whole tour of the world. You already have, because we've already broadcast from Baku and Geneva and all kinds of places. So you get a glimpse into my life traveling around the world, talking, speaking, debating. Capitalism, freedom everywhere. So today was a lot of fun. I got to talk in front of 60 pretty motivated students. I've got one, two, three, four, five, six more talks in the UK over the next week. Five of them at universities and one of them at a big public forum. Sponsored by the Adam Smith Institute. So hey, hey, this is going to be a lot of fun. I'm really going to be enjoying it. And next week when I broadcast the show from Warsaw, I can tell you a little bit about how it's going. So you'll get a little bit of insight into my travels. All right, a lot to talk about. As always, there's just tons going on in the world. And I find it all interesting and fascinating and fun to discuss with all of you. I thought I'd start with, I don't know, this issue, what's making the top of the news? What makes the top of the news right now? I mean, this is kind of, I don't know, I don't know what to make of it exactly. You know, there's Judge Moore stuff. So Judge Moore is the Republican candidate for the Senate in Alabama. As a Republican candidate for the Senate in Alabama, he should win. He should win easily. And I think he's still expected to win. But revelations came out through the Washington Post that he sexually harassed a young girl, 14 years old. And then that he dated some women aged 17, when he was 32. So this is 40 years ago. He was 32, they were 17. So I get the big deal made out of the fact that he sexually harassed a 14-year-old. I mean, absolutely. That's criminal. That's horrible. And the idea that anybody would sexually harass anybody, but particularly a 14-year-old, is despicable. But I find it interesting that he's also being really harassed for dating a 17-year-old. And you know, I don't know. It just seems to me like a 32-year-old dating a 17-year-old, maybe unusual. Maybe the parents of the 17-year-old didn't like it. But if it was consensual, I don't see the big deal. But more importantly than that, I want to put this all into the context of who this guy is, who Judge Moore is. And how all of this is making headlines. And Republican senators are withdrawing their endorsement of his senatorial campaign. And you know, he is being asked to withdraw. Now again, if he sexually harassed a 14-year-old, he certainly should, and all this is justified. But put it into perspective who this guy is. I don't think this guy is qualified to run for the Senate. Worse than that, I think it's abomination. An abomination that he's running for the Senate and that he's got the endorsement of any Republican for the Senate. So just to give you a little background, Moore was a judge in the Supreme Court of Alabama. He was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama. He was removed from the bench in 2003 because he refused a court order, a federal court order, to take down a monument to the Ten Commandments in a state Supreme Court building in Alabama. Now put aside whether you think the Ten Commanders should be in a courtroom or not. The fact that a federal court ruled and that you refused that ruling says that you do not respect the rule of law. You know, we all have rulings in the Supreme Courts, in the federal courts that we don't like, that we don't approve of, that go against our beliefs. But we live in a country of laws and we abide by those laws. And in particular, if you are a judge in a Supreme Court, if you are a model, a symbol of the rule of law, you have to abide by the court's decision. And indeed he was removed because he wouldn't do it. He wouldn't do it. Then last year, he was suspended for the remaining of his term, so he was removed and then he went back on to the court. He was suspended for the remainder of his term after telling probate judges to enforce the ban on gay marriage, which by then had been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. So here again, the U.S. Supreme Goals, you might not like the ruling, but now you're telling government officials, government officials whose job is to follow the Constitution and in this case whose job is to follow the rulings of the Supreme Court. Because it is the voice of the Constitution, like it or not. Most of the time I don't like it, but that's the fact. We live in a country of laws, not of men. You don't get to decide but of laws. And he told them to disregard the Supreme Court decision and to continue banning the marriage, gay marriage. Now this is disrespect for the rule of law. This is disrespect for the Constitution. This is disrespect for America, for what America stands for. This is why he should get no endorsements from Republican senators. This is why he should not have won the primary. This is why he should be at the top of the news and people should be bemoaning the fact that he's a Republican candidate. This is why his nomination is destroying the Republican Party from within. How can you have a senator endorsed by almost every Republican running who has no regard for the law? Has no regard for the rule of law? Has no regard for court decisions? Now of course this shouldn't be surprising to anybody. Because after all didn't President Trump just pardon Joe Arapro from Arizona, the sheriff, who again disregarded a court ruling. And it doesn't matter whether you agree with him on immigration or not. He disregarded the law. And he was a law man. He was a sheriff. His job, his job is to execute the law. Not his opinions, not his views, not his interpretation of the Constitution. Not what he thinks is right. The law. That is what it means to be a law man. That's what it means to be a judge. We are a country of laws and a Constitution. We are not a country of men each one interpreting it any way they want and enforcing what they feel like enforcing and not enforcing other stuff that they don't feel like enforcing. This is so anti-American. So anti-American these two characters. And it's not like they resigned in protest. I mean that's great. You should. If there's a ruling you disagree with, you write editorials, you speak up against it, you resign your position because you don't want to enforce the unjust law that was just, you know, approved by the Supreme Court or whatever. Okay. But that's not what they did. They kept their positions. Judge Morse stayed in the court. Sheriff Verrapro remained sheriff. And what they did was they just ignored the law. They just ignored the courts. And to me it's tragic that Trump pardoned him. And it's tragic that Republicans are going to vote this guy into office. Now think about this. We have made a huge deal about football players kneeling because of the anthem. It's disrespectful to America. It's disrespectful to the flag. It's disrespectful for the idea of America and the people who fought for America. I find Judge Morse behavior a hundred times more disrespectful to the flag, a hundred times more disrespectful to the Constitution, a hundred times more disrespectful to what it means to be an American. He basically ignored the Constitution. He ignored the rule of law. He missed his interpretation, his views above the law. And floundered it. Wasn't embarrassed by it. He floundered it. He's proud of it. He ran on that. And this is who we elect. They elect for senators. Now when he passes laws as a senator, and when we ignore them, is he going to say, yeah, okay, anybody can ignore the law. That's the American way. You can do whatever the hell you want. No, it's not. So I would say that the lead story should be Judge Morse as anti-American. Judge Morse as anti-the Constitution. Judge Morse as anti-the rule of law. And therefore he doesn't surprise me, since this is a guy who takes the law into his own hands and does whatever the hell he wants, that he flaunts the law in sexual harassing, sexually harassing a young girl. The whole dating thing doesn't bother me as much, but the sexual harassing, obviously, go to jail for that. But this issue, I just don't get it. I don't get why Americans don't get upset about this. Maybe we don't believe in the rule of law. Maybe that's the lesson that Obama didn't believe in the rule of law. I mean, he clearly didn't believe in it as he didn't believe in contracts. He bailed out, you remember the bailout of Chrysler and GM, where he just rewrote contracts, he ignored contracts, he ignored the law, and he just forced his solutions down people's throats. Maybe we've come to a point in America where we just accept that. We don't care anymore. Right, left, all we seem to care is what tribe you belong to. Oh, we like Judge Morse because he's our now tribe. He's a Republican tribe. We hate Obama because he's on the other tribe. We hate that other tribe. Oh, that Democratic tribe. I'm a Republican tribe. That's not what America's about. The Fronty Fathers didn't even want political parties because they were so afraid of exactly this kind of tribal behavior. What about individuals and measuring them and evaluating them? And if somebody like Judge Morse will not uphold the law when he is a judge, he does not deserve to be in the Senate. And I don't care who, I don't care if he's a Republican. I don't care if he's a Democrat. It does not matter. He does not deserve to be in the U.S. Senate. All right. We're going to take a quick break. You're listening to the Iran Book Show on the Blaze Radio Network. All right. So we were just talking about Judge Morse ignoring the rule of law and decisions made by courts that he was supposed to abide by. And I'm getting some pushback, I guess, on social media. People saying, well, slavery used to be legal, but people fought against it to make it. It used to be legal and people fought against it to make it illegal. Absolutely. And if you don't believe in gay marriage, fight against the law. If you don't believe the immigration law is a good, elect different representatives and fight against the law. But if you are a government official, your job is to abide by the law. That is what you do. You do not have personal opinions about these things. You do not change the way you enforce the law based on your personal opinions. You enforce the law as it is, as you understand it to the best of your ability. That's your job. And if you're not doing that, then you are disrespecting the Constitution. You're disrespecting your job. You're disrespecting the rule of law. And you should pay the consequences of that. And indeed Judge Morse was thrown off the court. But the people of Alabama are proud of him. Oh, he's a disruptor. He's a drainer of swamps because he disregards those laws. Those laws were passed by swamp people, by the establishment. So we shouldn't abide by them. That is very, very, very dangerous. When we start thinking in terms like that, that we get to decide which laws to abide by and which laws not. Fight against the unjust laws. Fight against the immoral laws. That's what I do. That's what all of us should do all the time. But that is us as private citizens, not as us as government officials. So anyway, put aside the fact that this Judge Morse guy is a... He does not believe in separation of church and state. He does not believe, therefore, in the Constitution, believes America is primarily a religious nation. And wants to enforce that religion and cram it down our throats. He's a bad guy. He is a bad, bad, bad guy. And, you know, if this is what it takes to defeat him, then I guess this is what it's going to take to defeat him. All right, you're listening to your One Book Show, and if you want in on the conversation, happy to take your call, 888-900-3393-888-900-3393. So give me a call if you want to talk about this, or any of the other topics we're talking about today. We will let the final segment of the show, so at the end of the second hour, I open up the phone lines for any questions, anything you want to ask me about any topic in the world. This is your opportunity to argue with me. This is your opportunity to complain. This is your opportunity to tell me why I'm wrong about anything. Or it's an opportunity to ask me a philosophical question, a political question, an economic question, a finance question, really anything you want to ask. So last segment of the show, Moment of Reason, we call it, you can ask me anything, call in 888-900-3393, in the meantime, free for you to call in with any questions you might have about the topics we are discussing. And love to hear from you, and love to chat with you. Some of the things I want to talk about today, I want to talk about antitrust. There's a big case, AT&T and Time Warner. I want to talk more broadly about the antitrust laws and why I consider them, why Ayn Rand considered them, probably the worst laws ever passed, and why so many people support those laws and why, you know, how they're being used today in this ridiculous case of AT&T and Time Warner. You know, if we have time, I want to talk more about trade. You can never talk enough about trade in the world we live in today. It seems like so few people understand trade, value trade, see the benefits of trade. So I want to talk about that. Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia. I want to talk about Saudi Arabia right now. A lot going on in Saudi Arabia. Oh, my God. It's fascinating. It's fascinating to observe. It's fascinating to try to keep track with everything that's happened. Basically, what we're seeing is the one branch of the royal family. I don't know if you know how the Saudi Arabia government works. But basically, there was a king. King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud. Now, Ibn means son of. So this is King Abdul Aziz, son of Saud. And of course Saudi Arabia is named after Saud. Now King Abdul Aziz was the first modern king of Saudi Arabia. Now Saudi Arabia goes back a long time. It goes back into the 18th century. They've been from the Saudi family. They've been many, many kings. But during World War I or during the Ottoman Empire, Saudi Arabia kind of somewhat disappeared. And then World War I, that whole area of the Middle East was occupied by the British. And the British basically promised Saudi Arabia back to the Saudi family and basically placed King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud back on the throne. He ruled from 1932 to 1953. So post World War I, he was the king of Saudi Arabia. If you want insight, like insight and have fun at the same time into the Arabian peninsula and what was going on there in that period of World War I, a fantastic movie, a great movie, a visually stunning movie, one of the great acting performances of all time. Islam is of Arabia. And I don't know how historically accurate it is, but it's reasonably accurate. So when King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud died, one of his sons became the king. And then what happened? Every time one of those sons died, a brother became the king. And so the kingdom has passed from brother to brother. Now, in the meantime, remember, each one of these kings has many, many wives. The Muslims, there's no monogamy. They have many, many wives. So they have many, many, many, many children. And if you have, within a few generations, you can see how massive, massive the royal family becomes in a sense of all the children of the king and the children's children and all the cousins and the nephews and the nieces. Well, nieces don't count. Women don't count in Saudi Arabia. It's only the man. The royal family becomes massive. And the way the government is structured, has been structured in the past at least in Saudi Arabia has been that basically these princes, the sons of the king or the sons of the king's brothers, have basically held all the power in the kingdom, both economic power, political power, military power, you know, internal security power. They basically run the country. And we are now onto kind of the last of King Abdulaziz's sons. He is the king today. That's King Salman bin Abdulaziz. Why is it bin Abdulaziz? Because the son of Abdulaziz, even I think is actually from Saudi. So he's from the Saudi family being his son up. So it's King Salman, son of Abdulaziz. It gets complicated. Anyway, he's the king now. And before the supposedly heir to the throne was supposedly the son of his brother, who was king before him. But buddy, a few months ago, King Salman got rid of the heir to the throne and put his own son as the direct heir. Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. So his name is Muhammad and he's son of Salman, the king right now. I know, I've already lost you with all this bin, bin, bin, bin, bin, bin, bin. But you know, bear with me. Anyway, Prince Muhammad bin Salman has basically been taking full control over the Saudi royal family. And it's, I think it's an unprecedented moves he's made. He's got rid of all his rivals, arrested them, fired them, dismissed them, put them aside. He's taken over all the important ministries himself. And just recently, massive, massive arrests and detentions of members of the war plus he promises to reform Saudi Arabia. All right, when we get back, we're going to talk more about this. The listening to Iran book show, where you're going to hear about what happens in some of these foreign countries. We're in the Blaze radio network and we're going to be back after this break. All right, we're back and before we go on with my analysis of the Saudi royal family, which I'm sure you're having fun listening to. We'll get to the fun part in a minute. I promise, I promise. We've got Daniel on the line. Daniel wants to talk about Judge Moore. So I want to make sure we don't get too far away from that topic before we take his call. Hi, Daniel. How's it going? Hey, you're on. How you doing today, sir? Good, good. What's up? I just have one question. I'm not saying he did it. I'm not saying he didn't do it. I've heard some different analysis of the Washington Post. I'll come up with my own judgment when the facts actually come out. But my question to you was I haven't heard you come down nearly as hard on the judges of the Ninth Circuit Court as you are on Judge Moore. They're already in office for life and they're not abiding by President Trump's executive orders for national security. You mean immigration orders? Yeah, the immigration... So this is the point, Daniel. Yeah, when the Supreme Court rules on those orders and when the Supreme Court backs President Trump on those orders and it has partially already, then the Ninth Circuit Court is going to abide by them. They have no choice and they will. I have no doubt they will. And if they don't, I will be the first one reeling against them. But in the meantime, there are challenges to President Trump's executive orders as is appropriate under our Constitution. There are challenges in the court system while those challenges are happening until there has been a final ruling on those challenges. Different courts are going to disagree and that's what's happening right now in the country. Different courts are disagreeing. It's going to the Supreme Court. It's been there already partially in resolve but it hasn't fully been resolved. My point is about, especially this guy out in Hawaii, is that the courts have nothing to do with national security. That's not true. That's not true. President Trump gave the president of the United States ultimate power over national security. So if he makes an executive order and says, we're not taking anybody from these countries, they shouldn't be able to say a darn thing about it. No, that's not how the system of government of the United States works. That's not how the founders intended it to work. Everything the president does, you should be able to question, you should be able to oppose, you should be able to bring before a court of law. The president is not above the law, above any criticism or any questioning or any challenges on any aspect of his job. So even when it comes to national security, the fact is that it is Congress that declares war. It is Congress that approves treaties. It is Congress that decides how much money goes to the defense department. On every aspect, there is a balance of power. So the president can't just go out and do foreign policy all by himself unquestioned. The Congress can't do whatever it wants. And the courts are there if anybody perceives something that the president or Congress does that it's unconstitutional. It is your duty to go to the courts and challenge what the president has done. And this whole thing of executive orders, the founding fathers saw what Bush, Obama, and Trump are doing with executive orders. They would have flipped over. They never wanted the president to have as much power as we're giving the president. We've created an imperial president. The president with far more executive powers than the founding fathers would have ever, ever wanted the executive branch to have. We believed in limited government with limited power to the president and limited power to Congress. So absolutely you can question what the executive branch does. You can question executive orders, even executive orders that have to do with immigration, even executive orders that have to do with immigration that couched as national security issues. You can question those through the court system and ultimately the Supreme Court will rule one way or the other. Now, if Donald Trump had said, it's an emergency, we have to do this because it's an imminent threat, nobody would have challenged that. That is not what was presented. What was presented was a plan to revamp immigration for security reasons in a particular way. That plan has been challenged. That plan will go to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court would rule. We are a nation of rules, not a nation of men, not a nation of executive orders. And this is actually, I believe, agree or disagree with Trump's executive order. This is a beautiful process. This is how a republic works. We should celebrate this process. And I know in Fox News you have all these experts saying, oh, no, this is wrong. Well, let's see if the Supreme Court says, if the Supreme Court, which is conservative right now, let's see if they go after this judge in Hawaii and say it's not your purview. I don't think that's what they're going to rule. They're going to rule, yeah, this is an issue that should have come to us. Here's our decision, one way or the other. Cool. That's the way the system works. And it's great. By the way, if Obama had done something through executive order that was national security, that Republicans had felt a thought was wrong and bad, they would have gone to a judge, probably not in Hawaii. They probably would have gone to a judge in Alabama and got that executive order suspended until it reached the Supreme Court just the same way Democrats did with what President Trump did. It's fascinating to me that anything Republicans do, this is my comment about tribalism, anything a Republican president does is okay with Republicans. And anything a Democratic president does is not okay with Republicans in the flip case. So let's be objective about this. There are too many executive orders. The executive branch is way too powerful, much more powerful than the founders intended. And the courts have every right to review presidential executive orders. Thanks, Daniel. I appreciate the call. Bye. And if anybody else wants to give a call and talk about Judge Moore, feel free to do so. I'm going to take a quick break because I've got a cough thing coming, so I'm going to take that offline. All right, you're listening to the Iran Book Show on the Blaze Radio Network and we'll be back in a couple of minutes. This is the Iran Book Show. The Blaze Radio Network. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, we're back. And it seems like I've stuck a bit of a nerve with the Judge Moore controversy and we've got Seth on the line. Here's Seth, how's it going? How are you? I'm good, I'm good. How about you? Excellent, excellent. Well, I'm a longtime fan. I don't agree with you on everything. That's shocking. I do admire your leadership in those parts of objectivism. The only main issue is Trump, actually. And that is that, again, he's not perfect, but when you bring up Senator or candidate Moore, I agree with you that he's definitely compromised in many different ways, but I would propose that Hillary Clinton was more compromised and more above the law. And as a result, given her attempt to become president, was more of a threat to the country. So my question is, while I agree with you on Moore, why didn't you apply the same concern with having a potential president who was even more compromised and more above the law? Well, I did. I mean, I think all our candidates are compromised and anti-constitution. And I don't think there's anybody out there in the political world qualified to be president of the United States and almost nobody qualified to be a senator. 90% of them are not qualified. And I certainly don't think Donald Trump is qualified to be president. And I think Hillary Clinton wasn't qualified to be president. And you could argue, and I'm listening to the idea that Hillary Clinton was less qualified and should not have been president. That's fine. I didn't vote for Hillary and I didn't vote for Trump because I think both abominations when it comes to what it means to be president of the United States, what that job entails and what that responsibility entails and what that job symbolizes. Maybe because I'm an immigrant, I still have this vaulted view of what it means to be president of the United States. And I just don't see any of these people being coming president. The thing about Judge Moore and we can debate Donald Trump some other time, but the thing about Judge Moore is that there are few people out there who are proud of the fact that they flaunt the law. Consider themselves completely above the law. Talk about it. Don't hide it. Hillary at least had the, what do you call it, the decency to pretend she wasn't a crook, to pretend she wasn't above the law, to pretend that the foundation and all of that was not a scam. This guy, I'll let you speak in a minute, I can't hear you if you speak while I'm speaking. I just can't hear what you're saying. This guy actually says, I don't care what the Supreme Court rules, I'm going to do whatever the hell I want and even while he's a judge, I mean that to me is so much worse for somebody in politics, I'm not saying he's a worse human being than Hillary Clinton, but in terms of what it means to be in government, the thing you have to at least say, you have to at least claim, you have to at least, even if you're pretending, is to say that I will uphold the law no matter what, that's the oath of office you've taken yet this guy took an oath of office when he was appointed a judge and he completely ignored it and pretended that it doesn't exist. So I find that reprehensible. Now let me also say a million people have talked about how evil Hillary Clinton was and how criminal her activities were. There were networks on television dedicated to revealing all this and to exposing it. Nobody is talking about Judge Moore. Nobody is talking about this issue. Now Democrats don't talk about it they don't want to talk about the rule of law before their own reasons. Republicans don't talk about it because they're part of the tribe and Republicans don't attack Republicans. So I'm the only voice out there saying that I'm going to hold Republicans up to high standards and I'm going to uphold any government official up to high standards and I'm the only person talking about Judge Moore in this capacity plus I think we have to remember that he doesn't believe in separation of church and state which I think is one of the most important things to believe in if you're going to be a public official but it is fronting of the rule of law it's just about an abomination and again I'd like to point out the hypocrisy of Republicans going after football players for kneeling and not going after Judge Moore for ignoring Supreme Court rulings. All right sorry that was a long rant go ahead Seth. Tell me why I'm wrong. Well again we have to put everything in perspective because you've got responsibilities trying to be a leader in objectivism I give you credit for that but I just think we all have a tendency to overlook the threats and when the issue of Hillary Clinton comes up she was so above the law and so corrupt in a national security standpoint she sold assets, secrets all kinds of favors but the threat by a hair and I think the threat of Hillary Clinton was much more than 99 or 100 corrupt senators they're all corrupt. I don't believe that, I believe that somebody who like a Moore who says I don't care what the Supreme Court rules I'm going to tell my clerks to do whatever they believe, they can't just know no matter what the Supreme Court rules no matter what Congress what laws pass I think the idea of electing somebody like that is a new low in American politics they're all corrupt in a variety of different ways they're all taking payments under the table we know that they're all leaking secrets making money think of how many of these politicians left and right go into politics poor and come out rich they're all corrupt in that way but to be a government official and say that's the move towards authoritarianism which I think is the most dangerous tendency that we have in America it started with executive orders under Bush it became even worse with the disregard for the rule of law under Obama and his blatant disregard for contract, his blatant disregard for agreement, his blatant authoritarianism with all his executive orders and it continues now with Donald Trump's executive orders with Donald Trump's kind of resentment towards Congress and resentment towards the Constitution and now with Judge Moore what I believe is the biggest threat to American security in the world today is not al-Qaeda it's not ISIS, it's not Muslims it's not Hillary Clinton in my it is the movement towards more and more authoritarianism left and right and I think that Democrats and Republicans are all responsible for this and I'm gonna call it out not just because I have a responsibility as an objectivist and as somebody who loves this country as somebody who loves the founders who loves deeply deeply loves the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution this is the last bastion and symbol for freedom on earth and if America goes the world goes and America is drifting slowly but systematically election after election president after president towards authoritarianism and I am gonna call it out and I am gonna keep calling it out and I would rather take corruption I would rather take people who steal but who are incompetent and impotent than people who are going to ultimately take over this country as authoritarianism and I spoke up against Obama I wasn't on the blaze back then so I didn't have quite the platform I would speak out against Hillary if she was president right now I would lamblaster every single week all the time but I am here to I don't care if the drift towards authoritarianism comes from Trump or Hillary or Obama or Bush I will call them all out there I don't care if it comes from from you know the Pope I don't care where it comes from I will call out the drift towards authoritarianism and if you think I emphasize more the drift that comes from Republicans I do because I think that there are plenty on the blaze and on other so called right wing networks who lamblaster left all the time I would like the blaze and I would like other networks that are on the so called right to do a little bit of soul searching in terms of who they support and you know what is being done in the name of the constitution and the name of the founders in the name of the republic so yeah I'm going to be more brutal towards people who seemingly are similar to me than I am to people who are obviously completely and utterly different from me I don't know if that makes any sense it does but I think you're just overlooking with all due respect you're over I would say you're overlooking and this might be controversial but as an objectivist I would make the claim that on this issue not on any other I haven't seen you any other contradictions actually I read you and I listened to you speak I met you once I would just say on this one issue you might be allowing your emotion to get a little too involved and maybe precede your logic on Trump because maybe because you're an immigrant or maybe for another reason but this is a contradiction I hate Bill and Hillary Clinton more than anything in the world if it was just based on emotion all I would talk about is what scumbags they are and how horrible they are and what awful people they are and what kind of a president he was and talk about sexual harassment why people are talking about Bill Clinton as the sexual harassment chief and who legitimized it by doing it in the White House you talk about Judge Moore dating 17 year old what was Bill Clinton president of the United States doing in a closet with Monica Lewinsky a young a young intern she wasn't quite 17 but she was young and he was president talk about power so no I don't think this is emotion this is really trying to be objective and trying to see where's the threat really coming from and what are people talking about and what are people not talking about and if everybody's talking about something and they're doing a decent job of it you don't need me to add on what you need me to talk about is what I'm uniquely qualified to talk about and what you need me to talk about is about issues that other people won't because I think of the tribalism so I am going to call out Trump because nobody else will because the left when they call out Trump they call him out on the wrong things and they call him out on stupid things I don't call out Trump on the same things the left does so I'm going to call out Trump because somebody needs to I'm going to call out Judge Moore because I think everybody should be calling out Judge Moore I'm going to call out Republicans when they fail to truly repeal Obamacare because they promised us for seven years to do it and I'm not going to do it from a left perspective I'm not going to do it from a neo-conservative perspective I'm going to do it from a radical for capitalist perspective and I'm going to call them out on the stupid tax bill that where they had a historical opportunity to do something significant and what they're doing is minor and insignificant I'm going to call the right out because somebody needs to do it who's not on the left and and the other thing I wanted I have to do is present to the world that there's an alternative you don't have to be a Republican you don't have to be a Democrat how about being a capitalist a pro-constitution a pro-founding father lover of liberty and if you are you do not have a home in the Republican party and you do not have a home in the Democratic party so maybe it's time either for a third party or for some of us just to say you know what we're going to criticize all of them we're going to criticize both sides and we're going to present to the world that there is a third opportunity there's a third way there is an alternative and maybe that'll lead to a third party ultimately because I think we need a third party in this country because the Republicans are so corrupt now it's hard to differentiate them from Democrats and on the issues where they are differentiable that's not a word anyway it's not good stuff it's primarily on things like like religion and on social issues so I think there needs to be a different way and I'm going to articulate an alternative way and I'm going to slam the left and the right when I see them doing things that are wrong now who's the bigger risk who's the bigger threat to the United States of America we can all have opinions about that but at the end of the day I don't influence public policy I don't influence public opinion that much whoever is going to win is going to win I don't know who the bigger threat is I think the right is going to be the bigger threat long term as a response to the corruption of the left I think the left is setting the stage for the authoritarianism of the right ultimately but how it pans out I don't know I just know it's going to be bad and I'm going to fight it and I'm going to fight both sides because they're both responsible now are you listening to your own book show and we're in the blaze radio network and we'll be back to talk about all kinds of stuff after this big set thanks to the call welcome to a discussion of radical fundamental principles of freedom rational self-interest laissez-faire capitalism and individual rights the Yaron Brook show starts now alright we just I think we've finished the conversation just more for a while I'm sure there'll be other opportunities to talk about Donald Trump and his presidency in the future as those of you who listen to the show you know as those of you who listen to the show I'm not a fan of Trump's I'm not saying he is worse than Hillary Clinton I've never said that I'm just saying I'm not a fan of Trump's and I will continue to criticize things that he does that I don't agree with and alright I want to switch to Saudi Arabia because I think fascinating things are happening in Saudi Arabia but at least I hope so and exactly what happens there has huge impact on us why does it have a huge impact on us because the fact is that the Saudi royal family and Saudi billionaires, millionaires whatever Saudi charities are the largest funders of terrorism maybe the second largest funders of terrorism after Iran in the world every time you see a radicalized individual they were radicalized by somebody who was funded or trained by the Saudis you see a long time ago the Saudi war family the Saud family cut a deal with a sect of religious fanatics called the Wahhabis the Wahhabis wanted to return to fundamentalist script based jihad based Islam and they said that the only way Islam would ever achieve its glory days again is if they went back to a strict interpretation of Sharia law and basically the deal was that we, you Wahhabis rally the people around us as monarchs and we will leave the spiritual world we will leave the teaching we will not challenge your dominance of the teaching of Islam so you get religion we get the state separation of state to church and we will run the state based on your spiritual guidance as long as you don't need to fear with our ability to accumulate money to go have orgies in Monaco to drive fancy cars to hang out in the western bars and drink and do all that as long as you don't need to fear with that you can preach whatever you want to preach fund whatever you want to fund the last certainly over the last 40 years since 1979 is partially in order to compete with Iran the Wahhabis have basically gone out there and helped fund all the radicalized Islamic movements around the world they were behind al-Qaeda they were at least originally very sympathetic to the Muslim brotherhood and funded the Muslim brotherhood and helped the Muslim brotherhood when the Egyptians kicked them out they were ultimately funding and behind ISIS they are behind every mosque in the United States or in Pakistan any madras, the school that teaches Islam in Pakistan or in Afghanistan that radicalized people to join the Taliban or any one of the Islamist terrorist organizations all of that if it's Sunni it's funded by Saudi Arabia and the war family has basically stayed out of it I think some members of the war family support us fund it, encourage it other members of the war family just stay out of it, they're too busy with the orgies or whatever and they've been trying to be friends with the United States so they don't want to be perceived as enemies of the United States but as the information leaked out on 9-11 it's clear that there was a Saudi at least link to the war family connection to the 9-11 terrorist attack the Saudis were involved, Saudi officials from the war family were involved and remember this war family constitutes thousands of people because of how many wives each man can have and because how many wives each king has had they have lots of children from lots of wives and they're just thousands of these siblings so it's a massive war family which controls every aspect of life in Saudi Arabia except religion that they have given over to the Wahhabis now comes this crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and he is 32 years old and he has been educated in the west and he has consolidated power he is the defense minister he's basically in charge of internal security and in charge of economic policy he is the heir to the current king Salman bin Abdulaziz that means Salman son of Abdulaziz and he will become king unless there's a coup unless he gets killed but prince Mohammed bin Salman is expected to be king that Salman will will actually resign as king, abdicate abdicate is the formal word, abdicate is king in order to allow a smooth transition so his son can take over anyways 32 and he claims to be more modern he claims to want to reform Saudi Arabia he claims to want to take away some of the religious authority from the Wahhabis he has actually put some Wahhabi preachers some of the more radical Wahhabi preachers in jail he has just recently arrested dozens of his own family members on charges of corruption which is bizarre because of course they're corrupt everybody's corrupt the whole basis of the Saudi economy is corruption for the royal family sucking out all the wealth created very little of it almost all from oil but so to me it's more than just it's not really corruption what it is it's a power grab he's eliminating all his cousins and other family members who might have claim to the throne or might have different ideas about policy now at the same time he's also telling the west we're going to reform we're going to allow women to drive we're going to loosen up our religious restrictions we're going to reduce our support of some of these radicalized mosques overseas we're going to shut down some of these Wahhabi extremists and he's also in the process of taking the Saudi Arabian oil company I mean it's funny to call it a company because it's basically the royal family and take it public and they want to float 5% of it and they think that by the time it's finished it'd be valued at well over trillion dollars which will make it the largest publicly traded company in the world more valuable than Apple and Google combined I think and the problem is that if they take the company public in London or in New York then they're going to have to abide by London and New York kind of disclosures and rules and they don't want to they don't want to disclose how the money is used they don't want to disclose where the money goes so now they're talking about maybe maybe we'll just do it on the Saudi stock exchange so a huge amount of going on it's fascinating at the same time they claim that the money they get over 100 billion dollars from the sale of stock they're going to use the divestive economy and by 2020 or at the very least latest by 2030 oil will not be the primary source of revenue the primary source of income for Saudi Arabia that it will have a diverse economy really is that really is that even a possibility? Do they have the resources? Do they have the nevermind the capital the money? Do they have the brain power? Do they have the people? the expertise, the knowledge to do that it's interesting so he's got a whole plan he's going to reveal I think next week and how to completely reform the Saudi economy and at the same time reduce the influence of Sharia law and the religious clerics on life in Saudi Arabia and he's arresting his opponents and he's not just arresting them last week a helicopter carrying seven members of the royal family relatively senior princes in this bizarre hierarchy had an accident and it crashed and everybody died now nobody believes it was an accident and again getting rid of opponents consolidating power now add to that the fact that he is in particular a hawk when it comes to his perception of the Iranian threat he believes Iran is Saudi Arabia's number one enemy he believes Iran is the number one destabilizing force in the Middle East so he is fighting Iran in Yemen Yemen is a country that was taken over by pro-Iranian forces, Shiite pro-Iranian forces not long ago and he is fighting a war in Yemen over Iran's influence in the Arabian peninsula he is fighting I think they initially supported ISIS because they were trying to fight Iranian influence in Iraq and Iranian influence in Syria now that kind of blew up in their face and now they are really worried because Iran is in Yemen to the south Iran is in Iraq to the north Iran is in Syria to the north Iran dominates Lebanese politics to the northwest and an interesting thing happened this week relating to Lebanon the prime minister of Lebanon was visiting Saudi Arabia and during that visit he resigned and has not been seen since the tree just keeps building he is a Saudi appointed prime minister Lebanon is dominated by Hezbollah Hezbollah is a terrorist arm of Iran and again I think the Saudis are trying to make a play they told Saudi Arabian citizens not to go to Lebanon not to be in Lebanon not to invest in Lebanon a complete ban on Lebanon so Saudi Arabia is playing a geopolitical game here trying to protect the Middle East from Iran's influence and I think a lot of this has to do with America's weakness the fact that America is not leading if you will the attack on Iran the protection against Iran Iran's developing ballistic missiles it's probably developing nuclear weapons it's it threatens not just Israel but it threatens Saudi Arabia with those weapons I wouldn't be surprised if you'll see the Saudis trying to buy nuclear weapons from the Pakistanis as soon as and what you're seeing is an arms race a power struggle and it's fascinating and partially what's happening is the Saudi Arabia is getting closer to Israel now it won't actually declare that but unofficially there are talks constantly between Israel and Saudi Arabia particularly about Iran and Syria and Iraq and Lebanon and one would suspect that if Israel actually attacked Iran because it viewed Iran as a threat a nuclear threat that Saudi Arabia would actually let it use its airspace I'm not sure the Americans would let Israel use Saudi airspace but I think Saudi Arabia would so the alliance is shifting and where's the United States in all of this no way Obama basically had an anti-American foreign policy that basically said yep we're going to support our enemies we're going to let ISIS grow up we're not going to fight them we're going to leave the Iranians alone we're not a threat we're going to kind of deal with them and we're going to just be friendly with everybody Trump has I think no foreign policy so it's not that he hates America he just doesn't have anything he's done nothing in the Middle East so far other than dance with the Arabian princes in the Saudi Arabia demand very little from them demand almost nothing from them the State Department actually was backing this guy the United States was backing the Iranians opponents for a while so there is no foreign policy in the Middle East we don't know what we're doing it's basically being run by the Russians and the Iranians Russian Iranian now Russian Iran and now the dominant forces in the Middle East other than of course Israel the United States is out of the game it's not a participant it's not there and the Saudis feel that vacuum and are trying to fill it now I'm not saying the United States should be there I think it should want to kill us and we should be defending ourselves from those people but I think we're being too involved in the intrigues of the Middle East that the Middle East has handled the intrigues all we need to do and this will be my final statement on this issue all we need to do as America is say if you mess with us we'll destroy you if you fund mosques where people get radicalized and kill Americans we'll destroy you if you fund terrorism that kills Americans anywhere in the world we'll destroy you so just behave people we're not going to be in your internal matters we're not going to be in your intrigues just beware oh by the way Iran if you really are developing nuclear weapons we'll destroy you we're not going to have nuclear weapons in the hands of a theocracy dedicated to the death of America ain't happening not under your own Brooks watch maybe under Trump's watch maybe under Obama's watch maybe under Bush's watch but not under my but well I'm not going to have a watch because I'm never going to be president alright it's about that time we're going to take a quick break when we come back I want to talk about antitrust laws unless we've got any callers who want to talk about Saudi Arabia or the Middle East no so for now we're going to skip over to a new topic we're going to talk about antitrust what's happening there and we'll be back after this bestselling author prolific media contributor, PhD in finance this is the Iran book show the blaze radio network this is the Iran book show alright we're back we're giving a lot of ground today giving you a quick history lesson and a political lesson in Saudi Arabia I do recommend but of course a series of lectures I think it's four four lectures on the history of the Middle East it's powerful stuff it's the best introduction you would ever get to the Middle East and the best way to get it is on my new website www.uranbrookshow.com y a r o n b r o o k dot com show dot com and if you go there and if you go to there's a tab there watch Iran or listen to Iran and there's under that there's history lessons Iran's history lessons and go to those and I highly highly recommend my course on two courses really one is on the history of the Middle East and another one is on the rise of Islamic totalitarianism on the rise of al-Qaeda and ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood and the whole kind of militant jihadi version of of Islam and I think you'll really enjoy it if you're interested in American Front Policy if you're interested in the history of the Middle East if you're interested in what we should be doing in the Middle East it is a fantastic resource you can get that on www.uranbrookshow.com go to listen and to history lessons and it's all there generally go visit my website and I think you'll find a lot of cool content some of the blaze old blaze episodes are there also other content that I put out videos, youtube stuff subscribe to my video channel please please subscribe to my video channel I'd really appreciate it alright so we are going to talk about I want to talk about antitrust antitrust is in news because AT&T is trying to buy Time Warner AT&T is both a telephone company a wireless telephone company it's also a wired telephone company it also provides internet via I guess fiber it also provides cable shows via fiber but also via its ownership of direct TV so AT&T owns all these kind of end user outlets it owns internet bandwidth and it owns cable bandwidth and then it's buying Time Warner and what is Time Warner Time Warner produces stuff it creates movies Time Warner produces TV shows it owns lots of TV stations and basically what what AT&T is trying to do is it is trying to vertically integrate the space what it is trying to do it is trying to own everything from content to delivery to your television or to delivery to your phone or to delivery to your iPad and over the years it's been questionable about whether antitrust will allow this and right now a lot of people at the Trump administration thought Republicans are usually a looser on antitrust so they will let this deal through and it's been in front of the various regulatory agencies I think for 13 months and it hasn't been approved yet and now it appears that the FCC might challenge the deal and rumor was was on Friday at least that they were trying to approach AT&T either to divest their direct TV offering or to divest CNN Time Warner and not Time Warner the Turner Broadcasting which Time Warner owns which includes CNN in the packet now this raises tons of issues one are they trying to penalize CNN because Donald Trump hates CNN that's an obvious question this is the problem with the president who gets into the mode of criticizing specific media companies and favors some media companies or other media companies explicitly and attacks them and ridicules them and denounces them and then when something like this happens you have to think the first thought that came into my mind was is this Donald Trump Vendetta and if so massive violation of the First Amendment massive violation of free speech massive and unconstitutional and everything else but everybody is saying no no no it's not that this is on antitrust grounds this is on legal grounds but what's the antitrust case CNN is certainly not a monopoly it doesn't dominate the industry Turner Broadcasting doesn't dominate the industry DirecTV doesn't dominate the industry this is a vertical integration horizontal integration is when you buy somebody who does the same thing as you here you're not buying the same thing as you you're buying your suppliers that doesn't create a monopoly now the danger is the danger is that Time Warner will take its content and offer it for less money to DirecTV and to AT&T I guess cable than to other cable companies like you know I Cox or whatever other cable companies or like Dish Dish Network right now that is an antitrust argument right but one of the ways that's been dealt with in the past is that the deal has been approved on condition that the company guarantees that they will offer the same term to the inside the company the DirecTV and the outside the company the other cable companies so you could have that you wouldn't have to force them to divest so one wonders what is actually going on what is the FCC thinking why are they doing this we've seen no real logical explanations to any of this it all sounds pretty voodoo to me and it sounds a little bit that maybe this is indeed vindictive but what this really is is an opportunity for me to talk more broadly about antitrust laws because I hate antitrust laws I think antitrust laws are the most unjust laws ever created I think they're anti-American I think that they're a penalized success to penalize large companies you know how you become large how does a company become large how does a small company get to be a big company how does a small business get to be big business by being successful by offering great values by offering great products or services by being really good at what they do by beating the competition by doing what American capitalism what capitalism says is good says is good and antitrust is an abomination because it attacks exactly that it attacks bigness it attacks success it attacks the ability of businesses to grow bigger and be more successful it attacks private voluntary choices that businesses make that the government has no business in interfering in alright so when we we're going to take a break here hard break but when we get back we're going to talk more about this and I want to tell you a little bit the history of antitrust where it comes from and all the evil it has done and all the disasters it is really it is really created this is this is bad bad law and it's about time somebody did something to do with it now somebody right here Trump has free speech no he doesn't he's president it's different when you're the government you won't hear traditional political views here this is the Huron Brook show on the blaze radio network the Huron Brook show what is this music oh man my listeners are always going to get up on their feet and start dancing is that what we want we're going to leave the listening to the show alright so we're talking about antitrust we're talking about this AT&T merger and somebody online says CNN is an entertainment company not media alright if you want to hold that that's fine but then Fox is too what drives me nuts is again the tribe right because I disagree because it's their television network and clearly it's leftist then it's not real but mine which is just as bad is real CNN, Fox all the same garbage in terms of any any semblance of journalism or objectivity the one has journalism or objectivity going for it alright so we're talking about antitrust and we've already got a caller this is a good it's a good topic and you guys should call on it because there's a lot of confusion about antitrust there's a lot of a lot of people who think of themselves as capitalists but a full antitrust laws and let me tell you antitrust laws and capitalism contradict each other you can't be for both let's dig in deep let's go for this alright we've got Damas on the line from Washington hopefully not the state Washington state maybe Washington DC oh I'm sorry for you I hate Washington DC I'm in law school at GW and one of my focusers is antitrust law and I'm in that boat of someone who considers himself a capitalist but I'm studying antitrust law and it's hard to balance that line so my question I've been dying to ask this question for a long time does a free market have anything to say about a cartel situation where you have a bunch of businesses getting together and they say we're only going to produce this product at this price and everyone agrees because it's not as simple as saying a new interest would come in and disrupt all that because they can always even their numbers just outproduced that person and run them out of the market so I'm okay if the situation is the free market has nothing to say about it but I'm just curious what do we do about that type of situation well let me break this down into two issues one is should the government have anything to say about it and my argument is absolutely not the government is there to protect individual rights it's there to protect us from fraud it's there to protect us from deceit from stealing from cooks and criminals and murder and rape and all that stuff it's not there to protect us from businessman who decide to let's say collude in this case there's no individual right at stake they're not deceiving us because the cartel is out in the open they're not lying to us we don't have a right I don't have a right to buy product X for certain amount and now they've raised my prices that is not a violation of rights I don't have a right to buy any good in any particular right so when I think about should the government be in this I think is there a rights violation going on and if there's no rights violation my answer is no the government shouldn't be in this so I'm not a utilitarian I don't look at this and say is society going to be better off if X Y and Z I am a rights I believe in rights now I also believe society is better off because I think society is better off when the only thing government does is protect rights and I think once it slots say oh no but in this case or in that case then it's a very very intensely slippery slope and soon enough the government is running our lives like it is today so no unless there's a rights violation in other words unless there's thievery going on the government has no role in the economy it should not be again unless contracts are violated it's something that the government is responsible for there's nothing here a government is not responsible for prices the government is not responsible for maximizing consumption or maximizing production or any of that the government should not get involved in any of this now let's turn to the economic issue would the free market deal with it and the answer here is absolutely yes and it does it all the time and cartels never work and cartels break up constantly there is a wonderful book by I forget his first name but Folsom F-O-L-U-S Fol S-U-M F-O-L-S-U-M he's an economist who lives in Michigan he might teach at the hills there college I'm not sure but he's in Michigan and he documents he wrote a history of Michigan entrepreneurs in the 19th century and the early 20th century Michigan for those of you don't know Michigan used to be the Silicon Valley of the United States if you had a great idea if you wanted to start a company you went to Michigan that's where the talent was it's where the capital was and the laws were such that you could pretty much do anything again as long as you weren't violating any other people's rights and get away with it in those days there was a chemical cartel a German chemical cartel and they set prices for all chemicals in the United States and a guy named Dao you know him now from Dao chemical fought them he was the new entrant and there's several sections of the book that describe how he fought them with different tactics and how he crushed them and I'll just give you one example because I thought it was so funny and of course you couldn't do it today because of all the regulations but it's kind of a neat example so what the German companies did Dao had figured out how to produce a certain chemical significantly cheaper than the Germans did so what the Germans did is they undercut his price in the United States what they did was they lowered the price of their version of the chemical lower than what Dao could produce it without taking a loss but of course they were losing money a huge amount of money because they had to drop it a lot because he had really increased efficiency significantly and so what they had to do is raise prices in Europe so they raised prices in Europe and they lowered prices really really low in the United States so this is what Dao did think about the guts it takes to do something like this he bought up all the product in the US he shipped it to Europe and sold it in Europe for lower prices than what they were selling in their own he sold their own product in Europe for a price lower than what they were selling it and thus undercut them in Europe I mean it's genius my point is get this book get the book there's a lot of other examples there are a lot of other books that describe these kind of things cartels don't survive part of the reason cartels don't survive is cheating the cartel usually falls apart because some of the members start cheating right that was my biggest I knew I didn't want government involved but I was just curious because when you deal with people individuals this is still something that they're concerned with and if you tell them there's no answer they're going to want government involved well but that's where we need to teach them to think in principle we need them to think in terms of individual rights the question is not if there's no answer prices will go up so what the question is, is a right being violated is this the role of government we have to get back to discussion of what is the role of government and get away from a utilitarian discussion of how to maximize utility invented by you know as projected by some person some way we have to get back from these ideas that there's some perfect competition and this is the great disaster that economists that economists teach our children perfect competition this model where utopia is when all firms exactly the same have the same information produce the same product and everything is indifferentiable that would be the most boring, pathetic ridiculous society in human history and of course is impossible would never happen but that's why they teach it so we need to teach real economics real economics is about differentiation real economics is trying to establish monopoly power it's trying to establish something that you're better at than anybody else and doing everything you can within the law to protect that differentiation so you know the whole way in which we conceive of monopolies the whole way in which we conceive of business and the whole way in which we conceive of the world of government distorts all of this so there is an answer and the book is just to repeat the book is the author is Burton Folsom B-U-R-T-O-N F-O-L-S-O-M and the book is called Empire Builders Empire Builders, thank you Stuart for digging that up for me I always forget the name of the book and obviously can't spell the guy's name but Burton Folsom Empire Builders highly highly recommend that book everything he wrote is excellent the myth of the robber barons is another great one he also wrote a good book on the Great Depression all right thanks Damus thanks for calling I appreciate the call I've got another call Logan wants to talk about insider training let me just say this about antitrust laws and then after the break we're going to take Logan's call because it's a bit of a switch of topic and not a huge not a huge switch antitrust laws are typical government laws they're written in an ambiguous way and maybe our law student can verify this they're written in a purposefully ambiguous way they're written in a way that the government can interpret anyway at once and they forego after pretty much anybody the fact is that almost every business person out there is in violation of antitrust laws at some point in their career think about it this way this is an example I'm going to give if you charge for your product more than the competitors do how do you get away with that you must be a monopolist so we can get after you as a monopolist because again the perfect competition model says everybody you know you can't charge more than somebody else than this you have monopoly power so if you charge more than other people they can come after you and they have come after people for violation of antitrust laws because you have a monopoly what if you charge less than everybody else less than your competitors significantly less than your competitors oh that's not allowed either that's called dumping it's undercutting undercutting competition selling stuff our loss is illegal according to antitrust this is how we can ban importation of steel and other products because we're claiming that these foreign companies are dumping and then so that's in violation of the law and they can come after you and then of course if your product is priced exactly the same as your competitors same price as everybody else in the industry then you must be colluding that's collusion, that's cartel and we go after you now I know that's an over simplification but it's not it's how this world functions and how our government functions and when a government becomes unlimited it becomes unconstrained by the idea of it's protecting individual rights it can do anything and it can come after anybody and it can go after anybody anytime at once and this is the history of the last hundred years 130 years of antitrust law 1890 antitrust law's first showman act was passed under republican administration republicans always seem to pass the nastiest worst regulation of business possible alright, we're going to take a quick break here you're listening to the Iranbrook show on the blaze radio network Israeli military veteran and radical for capitalism it's the Iranbrook show on the blaze radio network Iranbrook alright, we're in that part of the show which we call moment of reason where you get to ask me anything you want, anything you want those of you on the various chats online you can call in and ask instead of typing in and me not being able to read the question and not having the time to answer and now is your opportunity, 888-900-3393 888-900-3393 and we're going to go to Logan if I'm Colorado hey Logan hey, how's it going? I was just in Colorado I flew to London from Denver Derek flight I must have missed you I was wondering about insider trading because I was having a discussion with some family members and I was telling them I didn't see what the problem with it was and one of them remarked that if I were really a capitalist I have to be against anti or I'm sorry, insider trading and I really don't understand why somebody should go to jail over you know, trading information or trading on knowledge that they already have yeah, so let's again it needs to be thought through and it needs to be you need to really consider what are we talking about when we're talking about insider trading because it applies to a lot of different things but let's start with so this is the idea that if you have information that is not publicly available about a particular company you are not allowed to trade on that information because that gives you a so-called unfair advantage and you're not allowed to trade on that information and you could go to jail so this is true if you're the CEO of the company or somebody who works for the company or a supplier of the company or if you just happen accidentally across some information about the company like I don't know, you went through the trash can and found some stuff if you have information that's not publicly available theoretically you're not allowed to trade on that information now, yeah that is completely non-objective that is absolutely ridiculous and again there's no violation of rights you as an investor don't have a right to have a particular amount of information you don't have a right to have equal information there's no such thing as equal information you don't have a right not to lose money on a trade, you don't have a right to be shielded from somebody else having access to information you don't have access to that should all be open so I agree that there cannot be laws against insider trading however I do think in a free market there would be restrictions on insider trading what would those restrictions be I can think of two entities that on a voluntary contractual level could restrict insider trading one would be the exchanges so the New York Stock Exchange could say look if you want to list on our exchange if you want to trade through our system and if you're the CEO or if you work for the company or if you do suit the things they could set the rules however they want to set the rules then you have to commit to not using insider information and if you do use insider information you're violating the contract with us and we'll kick you off this exchange or whatever so that would be one entity that has an incentive and why would the exchange have an incentive because they benefit when there's high volume of trade they benefit when there are lots of buyers and sellers and the theory is that if there's a lot of insider trading going on and the insider is within the company then a lot of ordinary investors wouldn't participate they just leave the market and the exchange might say look we we don't want that because we want the volume of trade so we're not going to allow insider trading of this type to occur and that would be fine and then the NAS that could say we're going to allow it or the NAS that could say we're going to not allow different type of insider information not to be traded but to compete and we'd see which system works best that's part of the problem I think with what we have today is not only insider trading laws but accounting regulations because it is all centralized and top down from the government we don't have an opportunity for people to compete over what's the best accounting standard over what's the best rules for insider trading what's the best rules for listing companies and exchanges everything is cookie cutter determined by the government and there's no competition and there's no innovation so I think the exchanges would do something the other entity that would do it is shareholders so I think when you hire a CEO certainly as part of his employment contract you would list certain things that he couldn't trade on so for example if the company wasn't doing well you don't want your CEO to be allowed for example to short the company stock because then he has an incentive for the company not to do well and to tank it there might be certain types of information that you as the owner of the company the shareholder want to have access to at the same time as the CEO does and you don't want them to be able to trade before you have access to that information but that is up to the shareholders and to the managers and every company can be different and every company can have different rules and again competition would determine what makes sense doesn't make sense because CEOs who don't like certain rules would leave and it would go work for other companies and if they're better CEOs the rules would have to change to adapt to the better CEOs so I believe that all these issues and there are issues that come up with insider trading are resolved by the market and the worst thing you can do the worst worst thing you can do is make laws about it and criminalize it it's not criminal it is something that needs to be dealt with through contract law does that make sense yeah so it's not that I'm for insider trading it's that I'm for letting the market decide yeah I've figured that there is no reason that the government could be involved like you said completely subjective and there's no clear definition of what is insider trading and what's not like the anti-just laws the government leaves the insider trading laws purposefully ambiguous purposefully murky so that they can go after anybody and indeed a lot of their cases you know what some courts will prosecute to uphold the guilty verdict other courts will overturn it's very very difficult to know whether you're committing insider trading or violating insider trading laws or not because the laws are so messed up and that's sad and that goes back to the rule of law the topic we started with laws should be clear they should be objective they should be understandable the very fact that many of our laws today take hundreds of pages that only a super duper expert can understand what the hell they mean is an indication our status and how anti-capitalist and far away from freedom we have moved laws should be objective simple easy to understand even on technical issues efforts should be made to make them understandable and as I've said over and over again laws should only be passed in to define and protect rights to define and protect rights and rights need to be redefined occasionally because of technological change how do you define property over the internet what do you do with intellectual property all these things change over time I'm not against laws but not many you don't need that many these things don't change that often that's why you don't need a full time legislature in a truly capitalist country economy so one of the signs that again we're heading towards authoritarianism and that our government is out of control is the fact that our laws are so ambiguous so hard to understand the fact that nobody knows when they're violating the laws we need to go back to objective rule of law every Saturday at this time this place talk to you next time